


Healing hurts

by Starb_uck



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 08:38:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9986864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starb_uck/pseuds/Starb_uck
Summary: "It's simple, Lieutenant. Soon, home. Me, poof. You, Lee. House, babies. Long, life. *Happy, life. You understand?"Starbuck manages to stop Dee before she does something stupid, and reminds her of the importance of her relationship with Lee.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Dee is far too fabulous and gorgeous a character for the events of "Sometimes a Great Notion" to remain uncorrected. Here's what I'd have liked to have happened.
> 
> Not at all in my usual style. Must be having a mushy moment.

Frak it.

Dee considered the pistol. It didn't matter any more. Nothing mattered. Lee's heart was with Starbuck, that much was obvious. The fleet were never going to find a home. This, too, was obvious. So what was the frakking point of going on with any of it?

Sure, she could keep going as usual. Calm, competent Petty Officer Dualla. She wasn't frakked completely in that way.. she knew she had friends, that she was valued at work.. but somehow that just didn't seem to matter enough anymore. She'd go to work, do a good job, put on a smile, but it was all a lie. Truth was, she just didn't care any more. Didn't care at all. She was living a lie, and her life was a joke. And she was so damn frakking tired of it all.

She shrugged internally, and a small smile rose uncalled to her lips. She had, if she had but known it, never looked more beautiful. She raised the gun to her head.

"Dualla".

The voice was quiet and unexpected behind her. She knew that voice, but she'd never heard it so calm, so full of compassion.

"No, Dee".

The voice was closer. Dee suddenly breathed a huge gasping intake of air. She felt a sudden rush of panic at what she was about to do. She had thought she was calm, committed. She didn't know where this had come from. Not at all.

"This isn't your path, Dee".

Suddenly Starbuck was behind her in the mirror, and Dee moaned in genuine fear and religious confusion. Starbuck wasn't here. Couldn't be here. And yet here she was, smiling sadly in the mirror's reflection. She gaped.

"Starbuck? But..."

"Hey.." The pilot laughed, looking almost sheepish. "Sorry if I'm not... ah.. doing this right.. I didn't exactly, ah... sign up for this, y'know?"

Dee watched mesmerised as Starbuck's hand smoothly closed over her gun, moving it away from her head. It drew her hand gently but firmly down to her side, and held it there. Dee felt a clench on her fingers, and a slight pain - she heard as if in a dream the slight clatter as the weapon dropped to the deck. She stared, stunned, at the reflection in the mirror.

"But you're not.. but you can't... I just don't... I don't understand!"

"Don't worry about it, Dee. It's not gonna be long now. You'll see".

Starbuck grinned ruefully, but with a little bit of the customary spirit creeping back into her eyes.

"Hey, look... look, I'm really not cut out for this shit, okay? Don't give me any grief about it, wouldya?.."

She grinned at Dee, starting to hunt through her locker for something to take her mind off what she had to do. She'd neutralised the weapon, stopped the imminent threat, that was her job. That had always been her job. And she done it. This other... well... this was a new one. And she was damn sure that Dee wasn't gonna make it easy on her.

"Just.... What the frak *are you, anyway??"

Starbuck shrugged, not returning her gaze. She'd found a stogie, at frakking *last, and now she was hunting for a lighter. Robbing *bastards, she was forced to live with, that was all. Rifling through Hotdog's discarded cargo pants, she came up empty and wadded them up into a ball angrily. She slung them at the nearest bunk and growled angrily as she did so.

"The frak am I? Don't you mean what the frak're these sorry assholes?? Not a lighter amongst them!!"

Dee almost smiled, in amongst her utter and complete mental confusion. She reached into the pocket of her khakis, found her lighter, and held it out to the pilot who was now stomping angrily round the rack room like Dee had always imagined she did. Like Lee had always told her she did. Alway, always, with that particular smile upon his face.

"Starbuck".

"This isn't frakking easy for me either, you know?! I didn't ask for any of this..."

"Starbuck... here".

"WHAT??"

Starbuck finally paused in her frenzied search, looking over at where Dee now sat on the lower bunk. She looked at the lighter she held in her hand.

"Oh.. okay... thanks.."

She stared at Dee for long moments, then crossed to her. Dee snapped the lighter, smiling sardonically now as she did so.

"You never know when someone's gonna need a light. Sir".

Starbuck inhaled deeply on the thin cigar, and sank heavily onto the rack besides Dee. She leaned back, stretching. Typically Starbuck. Filling the whole small space with her presence.

"I guess not. Excellent initiative, anyway, Lieutenant".

"Thank you, sir. Sir.... can I ask you... can I enquire as to why you're here?".

Starbuck leaned back on Dee's pillows and looked at her. She puffed a smoke ring in her direction, stogie in her left hand and the confiscated gun in her right. She grinned. Same old Starbuck, all over again.

Dee expected some trite, goading response. She didn't expect the Captain's smile to falter, to fade off, for her to look away and to examine the cigar as if she'd never seen one before. She sighed.

"Not.. not used to this kind of stuff, y'know? I knew you were thinking about this crazy stunt and I just couldn't let you go through with it. It isn't right. It isn't in the pl..."

"What frakking plan?? And how did you know I was thinking about this anyway? I never told a living soul that I was thinking about...."

She stopped, choking up suddenly and dropping her head into her hands. She felt the cot shift as Starbuck moved up and swung her legs over the side of the rack to sit beside her.

"I know. If doesn't matter, Dee. It doesn't matter, now".

Dee stilled, then shifted, twisting to look at Starbuck with angry eyes.

"Whaddaya mean, it doesn't..."

"Ssssh. Please. I've got to tell you something. Two things, actually. Maybe you'll believe me, and maybe you won't, but you need to know. First thing. The fleet isn't far from home. Maybe we'll all still die in a ball of flaming space junk, but either way, the end is close. Don't ask me how I know; I just do. Second. Lee loves you. He might not always show it, and he might not always think it, but it's true. Believe me..."

"But..."

"Oh, me..?."

Starbuck raised a hand, looking away over Dee's automatic objection.

"You don't need to worry about me, Lieutenant. Perhaps on another world, in another time, Lee and I would have been good together. In this one... Nah..."

She gave her trademark Starbuck smirk at this, grinning around the edge of the cigar which was now almost a butt. Dee thought crossly for a moment about the smell of her pillows.

"So I'm not sure I know exactly what you're saying, Captain".

In truth she felt a bit sideswiped. She had set herself up to do the ultimate deed and now instead she was hearing all kinds of strange stuff she'd never expected.. and from Kara Thrace, of all people.

Kara sighed.

"It's simple, Lieutenant. Soon, home. Me, poof. You, Lee. House, babies. Long, life. *Happy, life. You understand?"

"No". 

Starbuck laughed out loud. She lunged up suddenly, taking Dee by surprise as she scrabbled for the edge of the bed.

"Me either. But I do know that I was wrong to frak about with what you two had, and I'm sorry for that. I mean it.."

For a moment her eyes met Dee's and the Lieutenant saw there a great yearning and an envy for what could never, ever be. She saw also the great willpower and character it took to let it go and allow someone else to have it in their place. She swallowed, suddenly seeing Starbuck in an entirely unexpected new light. She opened her mouth to speak, but the pilot forestalled her, holding up a hand.

"Dee. I've said enough.. I've probably said too much without actually saying anything at frakkin all...

She did a little pirouette in the centre of the room, making a neat show out of sliding the Lieutenant's side arm into her pocket.

"I'll just keep a hold of this, for a coupla days... Y'understand? Oh and Dee..." She stopped by the door, looking back. "I don't do talking, but Lee does, as you probably know. Talk to him, would ya? You're so much more special than you know, and nobody deserves to feel the way you do. In fact..."

Dee was boggled. She felt she hadn't barely even begin to process half of what the mad Captain had said, and she was already halfway out the door. She was like a tornado, or a bloody waterspout or something. She wouldn't quit until she'd flattened your house and left you breathless. Or, in this case, possibly, just *possibly, rebuilt your house and left you rageless, impotent. Dee felt windswept, but she also felt, for the first time in such a very, very long time, a stirring of excitement and the briefest flutterings of hope.

Starbuck opened the hatch for a moment, then stuck her head back around and grinned as she slipped out.

"Hey hey hey!! You've got a veeeseeeetor!!"


End file.
